Astronaut Bruce McCandless II Dies at 80 “Former NASA astronaut Bruce McCandless II, mission specialist on the STS-41B and STS-31 missions, died Dec. 21, 2017, at the age of 80. McCandless is perhaps best remembered as the subject of a famous NASA photograph flying alongside the space shuttle in the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU) – the first astronaut to fly untethered from his spacecraft. His time as an astronaut encompassed […]